28 May 2015

I love this deep meditation on pixel-based art from video games. Even though it’s slightly off-topic for the blog, this is my “must read” of the month. It’s revelatory to read someone who know details of animation and art show the pros and cons of using pixels. The comparison of two takes on the Street Fighter character Chun-Li is wonderful:

When they see SFIII or KOFXIII, they don’t see the unbelievable craft that went into it, or if they do, they have to first reconcile what they see first, which is the magnified image above. They have to pay the pixel tax.

Here’s the rub, and a lesson that applies to conference posters:

Nobody owes us their time or attention. As such, when someone gives us their time, an implicit agreement is made and we are now in debt to that person. We owe it to them to deliver value for their time, and to deliver it efficiently. ... Speak in a language people can understand so that they can actually see what makes your work great without a tax.

Scientists need to remember that they are deliberately designing a product for an end-user. This focus on an audience may seem obvious, but it is surprising how many scientists forget about their target audience. We say “it is time to submit the paper to the journal,” or “we need to make a poster for the conference,” and we often forget that we are really creating products for people.

“Once you understand the design of flags... you can understand the design of almost anything.” This nice TED talk makes a reasonably convincing case for that thesis, and there are lots of lessons for poster design, too. Hat tip to B. Haas. This gives me an excuse to show this flag, because it’s well designed, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, and is my nation’s flag:

Watching (Mad Max: Fury Road) made me think of that meme going around with Captain America lecturing Spider-Man. It’s nearly three pages long and it’s just Cap quoting from a book. Quoting from a book.

Not only did this bore me to tears, but it also stunk like a burned out writer looking to fill page count. Now look, I’m a huge Alan Moore fan, so I’m used to verbosity in comics, but Moore understands that comics is a visual medium. This kind of exposition doesn’t belong in a visual art like comics or films. Moore gets that. So does George Miller. Everything in this movie communicates in such a powerful way that dialogue is almost unnecessary. Cap is a man of action, not a man of lecture.

Conference posters are also a visual medium.

I often use other people’s images in my posters. A new source of of high resolution public domain images can be found at the State Library Victoria. Many of these are old vintage black and white photos, which can give them a lot of visual interest. This pic of Wendy the Wombat is proof. This post is better because it has a picture of a wombat. Hat tip to my mate Ely Wallis.

Designing a new typeface is a challenge, and Japanese particularly so. Here’s a peek into a Japanese type foundry, where they are still designing each character by hand. (Original article, with images but paywalled text, is here.) Hat tip to Garr Reynolds and John Meada. http://t.co/QIiNl2N4Cm

Do not write or revise your paper or poster at the conference. I’ve seen junior and senior colleagues make this tactical error all the time. You must have your paper finished before you come to the conference... You do not earn any points with anyone by saying, “I can’t go because I have to go to my room and finish my paper.”

Academic conferences are a habit from the past, embraced by the administrativersity as a way to showcase knowledge and to increase productivity in the form of published conference proceedings. We have been complicit.

Everything I have ever published has direct origins in one or more conferences, a lineage I can trace through my CV, mapping the formal and informal ways that academic gatherings have shaped my work. And I know I’m not alone.

The book How Posters Work by Ellen Lupton is coming out soon (and you better believe I’ll be reviewing it!). Here’s an article about the exhibition the accompanies the book:

“Posters are the only genre of graphic design that is explicitly created
to be stuck on a wall,” Lupton told me in an email. “Many people are
more comfortable displaying posters in their own homes or work spaces
than they are with more formal or serious works of art. Posters are part
of everyday life, so they feel approachable and real.”

21 May 2015

It’s long past March, but poster design knows no season! This week’s poster comes from author Cameron Fuqua, and is used with permission. Click to enlarge!

In a reversal of the norm, the tables – usually one of the things I like least on a poster – are one of the best things on this one. The tables avoid the “data prison” problem: that is, too many lines encasing each cell. The colour banding to distinguish rows is subtle. The gradient fills provide a little emphasis for each cell, but are not distracting. The silver gradient fills for the text boxes are also well done, providing some visual interest that is not distracting.

I wish that aesthetic extended to the rest of the poster.

The rest of the poster is confined within thick, heavy-lined boxes. The poster would probably be significantly improved by thinning or removing the lines entirely.

Worse, they’re boxes with rounded corners. The rounded corners brings the lines of the box closer to the text, which is already a problem. There is no space between the text and the lines, particularly in the upper left boxes. Further, the rounding isn’t consistent. Some corners are quite curved, others are closer to right angles.

I like distinctive typefaces for titles and section headings, but this one (something in the Eurostile family, I think) sacrifices too much legibility for decoration. From a distance, common letters like “a” and “e” are hard to tell apart. There is some variation in the heading weight: some things are in bold (which is contributing to making the letters hard to read), some not.

Underlining is used for emphasis, which also make it more difficult to read the text.

Throughout the poster, there are dozens of cases with things being poorly aligned or placed. Some of the mathematical equations have a space surplus on one side or another.

Finally, predicting the outcome of a competition is something that many people should be able to understand and relate to, regardless of the complexities of the mathematical equations behind the predictions. I’m surprised that when I look down in the lower right, where I expect to see an answer to the question, “Can I use this method to get a better bracket?”, I can’t see any answer. I would love a single sentence like, “This new model’s performance is better / as good as / worse than previous ones.”

14 May 2015

Some other resources on poster design recommend that people use bullet lists extensively for their posters. I advise against it, most of the time.

The pros of bullet lists is that by their nature, people tend to write less text. That concision is very useful on a poster, I admit.

But I want to argue there are more negatives to using bullets that positives.

First, my experience with looking at PowerPoint slides is that people are inconsistent in how they type bullet lists. For example, people often punctuate some bullet points with a period, but leave others without a period. When people write sentences in paragraphs, they will put a period at the end of every sentence.

Second, the size and spacing of bullet points is often badly done in software. Even PowerPoint, the culprit that made bullets ubiquitous, doesn’t scale well when you move outside of the standard slide sizes. Here’s a quick mock-up for a four foot wide poster with a bulleted list (click to enlarge):

Under this default scheme, the bullets are too far from the text. The spacing between lines and points is also a little dodgy. Microsoft Publisher, which I use a lot for posters, handles bullets even more poorly.

Lists can communicate three logical relationships: sequence (first to last in time); priority (least to most important or vice versa); or simple membership in a set (these items relate to one another in some way, but the nature of that relationship remains unstated). And a list can show only one of those relationships at a time.

Bullet lists may be more concise, but they are impoverished compared to sentences in paragraphs. Sentences can express many more relationships.

Fourth, readers are trained to read sentences in paragraphs. It is the most common thing we read, and is how we expect to absorb complicated ideas.

This is not to say that bulleted lists are useless. They are completely appropriate for short lists. A poster, though, should be more than just short lists. For example, I feel okay about using a bulleted list for a quick summary of my case again bullet points:

Bullets are used inconsistently

Bullets are poorly typeset

Bullets show relationships poorly

Readers are used to sentences

I don’t think I would convince anyone of my argument if that list were all I posted.

This is the first time we’re charging for a #SciFund class (US$50), so I’d like to address is a question I’m sure many people will ask:

“What am I getting for my money?”

Valid question. After all, I’m one of the instructors, and this blog exists to spread ideas I have about poster design around for free. If someone read all the entries in this blog, you would probably have a very good idea of some of the things I’d be talking about in the class.

One benefit of the class is that you’ll be able to have a lot of interaction with the instructors. It isn’t just me leading the class; I’ll be joined by Anthony and Jai. And while a blog is static, working in the class will not be.

Perhaps more importantly, you will get to have a lot of interaction with other students in the class. In a class like this, the opportunity to get the ideas and feedback of others can be invaluable, because different people bring such different ideas about style.

Another thing that you get from being in the class is that we do have plans to offer a certificate of completion for those who make it all the way through. This could be useful in demonstrating that you’ve been engaged in professional development activities.

Once again, you can click hereto register for the class! I hope you will join us!

07 May 2015

I’m very excited to announce a new poster making class, sponsored through the #SciFund Challenge!

#SciFund started out as an experiment in science crowdfunding, but has expanded its mission to include science communication and professional development.In this class, you’ll learn basic design principles, be instructed in how to use Adobe Illustrator (a powerful, vector-based graphics kit), and build your communication skills. And yes, you will make a poster!Because we want class participants to make something that is useful to them, we ask that you have a research project with data or a research proposal. This might be a project you are presenting at conference this summer, or, if you’re an early career academic, might be a proposal for a thesis or dissertation. We also ask that you have access to Adobe Illustrator.The class runs five weeks, starting Sunday, 7 June 2015 and running through Saturday, 11 July 2015.

Unlike some online classes, where it’s just you and the computer, this one has lots of meeting time with moderators and other class participants. The main moderators will be Anthony Salvagno and me (Zen Faulkes).We expect participants will put in about 5 hours a week for their assignments. We will also have hangouts (group therapy for poster design) and some group work for review and feedback.Participants should be generally available between 10:00 am and 10:00 pm Eastern time to be in class hangouts and other events. (Multiple time slots will be available to meet.)People who successfully complete the course will be given a certificate of completion.The cost will be$50, and registration will begin soon. The last #SciFund class on video making filled up, so watch this space, follow the #SciFund hashtag on Twitter, and the main #SciFund page for more details.